Obscurity, much?/Disney
Disney has a habit of sending their older shows into obscurity, dumping most of their shows to DVD only once and then trying to send their programming into obscurity. Meanwhile, they re-release their movies once in a while and even treats Lilo & Stitch (well, at least the movies) like it would take a long time for it to become obscure. However, as stated before, their shows aren't so lucky not to fall into obscurity. With the impending launch of Disney's streaming service Disney+ in late 2019, part of this page may soon be outdated. It's becoming so prevalent across Disney that the company had to get its own page. Keep in mind that this page is only for shows produced and/or distributed at least partially by Disney. *Despite PB&J Otter running three seasons, the show was taken off around 2005, before finally returning around 2012 and was outdone by Disney's older-skewing series (you know, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, etc.). Since then, episodes were uploaded to YouTube (knowing Disney is launching Disney+, they're now taking these down like the plague) and... the series was sometimes found via Disney Junior on Demand, despite the series rarely being seen on the actual channel anymore. The fact that its creator, Jim Jinkins, created one of the first Nicktoons makes this more humiliating. Despite this, at least one person working for Disney still cares about the show, seeing how the show was on the Disney Junior app for a while. **Even more ironic is the fact that Jim Jinkins was just making Pinky Dinky Doo when Disney took the otters off the air. **The fact that Disney bought out 20th Century Fox in March 2019 (see below for that) does not help this show's case. With said Fox acquisition providing a massive back catalog for Disney to use for its upcoming streaming service, it has yet to be reported whether this show will be on Disney+ or not. *In its six years as One Saturday Morning and the next nine years as ABC Kids, ABC's Saturday morning block had a reputation for churning out obscure series from 1997 to 2011. No other Saturday-morning kids' block on ABC (not even Litton's Weekend Adventure) has this reputation for having all its originals become obscure (for specific examples, Schoolhouse Rock!, itself now owned by Disney with several DVD releases, and the various Scooby-Doo series that aired on there (thanks to the power of Cartoon Network, no less) avert this trope). It didn't help that by ABC Kids' final years, the block was essentially Disney Channel on ABC. Specific examples, mostly from the One Saturday Morning era: **Pepper Ann for the most part. Not all 65 episodes are online, and plus, it's a One Saturday Morning cartoon that isn't named Recess, so... **Disney tried to forget about the Teacher's Pet cartoon series, and acknowledged the movie more than the actual show. **While Nickelodeon's Doug is easy to find, try finding the Disney continuation. **Recess. While all 65 episodes can be easily found, and its theme song is catchy, and it was the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon at one point, the series is still semi-obscure. **Teamo Supremo was burned-off on Toon Disney due to its obscurity. It also didn't help that most people only watched Toon Disney for Jetix (see below). **Even after the end of One Saturday Morning and its subsequent replacement ABC Kids, Litton's Weekend Adventure ended up having to change the name of its show Rescue Heroes to Hearts of Heroes partially to avert this, but the main reason was presumably due to a lawsuit from Fisher-Price and Nelvana, who jointly claim ownership to the animated series. *Jetix, despite boosting the ratings of Toon Disney (it didn't do much on what is now Freeform), is semi-obscure at best outside the United States (the majority of those who want Jetix to be revived happen to be from the US); there's a reason for that, though; both Jetix and Toon Disney were falling into countless repeats of series so they decided to retool the whole channel space into Disney XD. Not to mention that it wanted to focus on its three core brands: Disney, ABC, and ESPN. Disney hasn't done much, though; a Russian version of Jetix is broadcast on YouTube, and neither Disney nor any of the people who own the cartoons broadcast were willing to take it down, and a person has a Twitter with the intent of rebooting Jetix, possibly as an online channel. *Phineas and Ferb and Gravity Falls (thankfully) currently avert this despite the fact that they already ended, considering they're being rerun on Disney XD as of 2017 (and not to mention both have huge fanbases, and the former even received a set of videogames when it was still running). *The 1980s DuckTales series is semi-obscure at best in America, but apparently there was a large enough fanbase for Disney XD to reboot it 30 years later. **Darkwing Duck shares the same amount of obscurity as the original DuckTales, if it's not more obscure. *Among Star Wars fans, Star Wars: Droids and Star Wars: Ewoks are semi-obscure at best, to the point where they haven't seen a physical release ever since Disney bought out Lucasfilm. Ironically, those series aired on ABC, which Disney bought 10-11 years later. **This might've been due to legal issues; those shows were produced by Nelvana, who themselves churn out massively obscure shows, and most of the Nelvana cartoons that don't fall into obscurity tend to either be for preschoolers or are dubs of anime series such as Beyblade and Bakugan. *Marvel cartoons that aren't related to Spider-Man (or The Avengers, or more recently Guardians of the Galaxy) tend to be ignored by Disney despite Disney buying out Marvel back in 2009. *The majority of the Fox Kids series save for Bobby's World. Not helping was the fact that Disney didn't want the cartoons in the first place; they just wanted Fox Family so that they can turn it into their answer to Adult Swim, but a stipulation said the company had to take the whole thing (including the Fox Kids series as well as the Saban-produced shows) if the sale was to go through. What does Disney do with the library? Rerun various shows from said library on their international Jetix channels until they became Disney XD, and nothing else. The cherry on top? As mentioned below, 16 years after buying out the Fox Kids library, Disney announced its intent to buy up the rest of Fox's library while leaving the broadcast network alone (ironically, this deal would also re-unite the library of MTM Enterprises with the rest of the ITE (now ABC Family Worldwide) library, and thus having one of the most well-known sitcoms ever to hit syndication in the hands of Disney). **Bobby's World was only saved from being obscure thanks to Kabillion- Splash Entertainment currently owns the distribution rights and released all of it on DVD. **C Bear and Jamal is more obscure than the rest of the Fox Kids series, thanks to its short run. Not to mention the most obscure Film Roman show. *The above examples didn't matter to Disney by the time they acquired the rest of Fox's television series; at the end of 2017 Disney announced its intent to acquire Fox save for the broadcast network (Disney already owns ABC; a full-scale buyout would lead to Disney being sued for antitrust issues, and thus it was decided that the broadcast network would be spun-off) and some other assets; notably, the sports networks were sold to Sinclair (keep in mind, Disney bought out Fox Kids just sixteen years before). One important thing to note is that Disney acquired 20th Century Fox Television, which includes a long list of cancelled/obscure series. *Technically The Black Cauldron escaped this as it was more known for almost bringing Disney into bankruptcy (it convinced Disney to develop better movies because of this), but no one was willing to re-watch it until 1998, it was never re-released into theaters, and the video game adaptation was completely obscure. *Timon & Pumbaa ended up having its third season become this, thanks to Disney making said third season for international markets after buying over ABC (see above) and dumping CBS after season two, then dumping it to Toon Disney in the US. *Ever since Disney acquired Fox (see above), more and more of Fox's animated sitcoms that lasted no more than a season have gotten this. The only exception was Allen Gregory (and even then Family Guy was Fox's only other show to acknowledge its existence), if only due to its negative backlash... that is, if you live in North America (Global simulcast the show in Canada during its very short run). That said, this trope is just as likely to be parodied and played in-universe in the bigger Fox shows: **Parodied in Futurama during its Comedy Central run as a way to call Fox out for cancelling it the first time around; the show being set in the year 3000, "Futurella", its counterpart set in the year 4000, gets cancelled after three to five seconds. Groening's response? "Wow. Fox has really streamlined the process." Futurama itself, meanwhile, was revived thanks to the power of Adult Swim. **''The Simpsons'' (also by Groening) also does an in-universe example in Krusty gets Kancelled; first to Krusty the Clown, then to Gabbo by the end of the episode. **In 2009, Cleveland left Quahog to get his own spin-off. From that point until said spin-off was cancelled, the only time the former show acknowledged The Cleveland Show (aside from Stewie pointing out an ad for it) was when Peter said "Oh, that's right. Cleveland moved." **Similarly, Roger of American Dad! calls the president of the network that aired the fictional sitcom White Rice: "We've been cancelled." "After one joke?" "Apparently the Asian community is in an uproar".